John Oliver reveals a new 2021 obsession to replace his beloved Adam Driver

There is a huge Adam Driver fan club out there in the world, but John Oliver is definitely the president, CEO and co-founder. Throughout the seventh season of Last Week Tonight (stream now on Crave), Oliver introduced a running bit all about Driver... and his "impenetrable barrier" of a body. 

On several occasions, Oliver would submit to his obsession with the Star Wars actor and describe in great detail everything he would want the 37-year-old actor to do to him. Driver appeared on the season finale, even though he thought Oliver’s bit on him was very strange. Oliver received a video call from Driver, who didn’t love the creepy obsession, but the pair hashed it out, and the actor was very forgiving.

Oliver spoke with etalk’s Traci Melchor about his love for the Girls actor, and when Traci told him that he had “a bit of an obsession,” Oliver said that was “an understatement.”

Though we know John's Driver love is as strong as the actor's broad shoulders, in an effort to leave 2020 behind, Traci suggested that perhaps the host wanted a new obsession to foster on his upcoming 2021 season. Perhaps another "driver" of sorts like "Formula One premiere driver Sir Lewis Hamilton?” 

“Sir Lewis, thank you for adding the sir on top of that, yeah," Oliver said. "Listen, he’s very good looking, drives a fast car, he ticks every box. Honestly, it’s a pretty solid pitch. He looks good in a jumpsuit. You’re not wrong. He’s very good looking, Sir Lewis.”

"Drive your wheels over me you speedy daemon,” Oliver added.

When discussing his hopes for 2021, Oliver said that this year has “a low bar to clear” because of everything that happened in 2020. “I’m feeling more optimistic than I was but not fully optimistic. We’re still in a dark place. I think, like most people, I’m just glad that last year is over."

Oliver said that “as much as calendars are a construct,” it was helpful for him to shut the year down with an explosion on his final 2020 episode of Last Week Tonight. “And then kind of turn our heads towards what does the world do now in response to, not just the pandemic, but all the systemic problems that the pandemic has shone that unflinching light on.”

Oliver said that it’s been “very easy” for people to ignore some of the problems (read: systemic oppression), but he hopes they will be hard to ignore going forward. “You always have to count your optimism there because we, as a humanity, have been very good at deciding to forget the inconvenient things over the years when things get more comfortable,” he added

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Will Oliver escape the great white void (AKA the decentralized digital space where COVID-era shows are produced) in Season 8? He said he hopes he will leave it “sometime, hopefully,” but makes no promises. “Not right now because of, you know, the thing. So we will be in that great white void for a while. I don’t know when we’ll get back in the studio, but I think we’re going to err on the side of extreme caution,” he said. 

Oliver also shared that many of the Last Week Tonight staff got sick during the beginning of the pandemic, which makes his team “hyper-cautious” with the decision to return to the studio. When they come out of the great white void, he said it isn’t really up to them, but it’s when the vaccine gets “distributed properly.” 

Last Week Tonight has been off the air since November, and a lot of late-night hosts lost their main punchline for their segments when Donald Trump left office. Oliver said that it’s “going to have him take in the oxygen in the room every week.” He said that his show has always been more interested in talking about policy than personality in politics.

“We’re very much looking forward to focusing on some of the incredibly dry stories that no one really wants to hear about,” Oliver added. “If our show has an MO, it’s presenting something that you hear about for the first minute, and you think ‘I don’t know if I want to hear about this,’ and by the end of it hopefully, it’s been interesting and funny.”

Oliver voted for his first time in the United States in the 2020 election, and he said the experience was “meaningful.” He continued, “Partly because it was a huge relief, as anyone who’s gone through the immigration process in any country let alone America knows that innate anxiety you hold onto for a long time. And when I first got my U.S. passport, I couldn’t really trust that it was real, so what I was looking forward to doing was leaving the country and coming back,” he said. But of course, with the ongoing pandemic, the late-night host hasn’t had the opportunity to test it out yet.

“The first time it really felt real to me was feeding my ballot into a machine and saying ‘you have been counted.’  As cliché as it seems or as sappy as it seems, that really meant something to me,” he said.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returns for season 8 Sunday, February 14 on Crave.

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